Matthew Smith, KNOM - Nome

The aviation company flying to the island village blames a combination of mechanical issues and weather is keeping flights from resuming, but residents say they’re getting by despite just one delivery of mail and cargo in the last month.

The only aircraft flying to one of Alaska’s most remote communities has been down for maintenance for nearly three weeks—leaving residents of the Bering Strait community of Little Diomede with empty mailboxes, bare grocery store shelves, and no way on or off the island.

A program that distributes millions of dollars a year to keep homeless and emergency shelters open across the state is nowhere to be seen in Governor Bill Walker’s budget—leaving dozens of organizations scrambling for the money they’ll need to keep their doors open.

Ash from a Russian volcano diverted the nightly flight into Nome Thursday. The Global Volcanism Program at the Smithsonian Institution tracked “powerful explosions” last week and into this week from the Shiveluch volcano, considered one of the most active volcanos on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula, that sent plumes of ash up 32,800 feet in the air.

Most placer mining operations in Alaska are small, but combined they bring in more than $100 million a year. That’s according to a new study from the Alaska Miners Association looking at the economic impact of placer mine operations across the state.

Both boys charged with chasing down a herd of muskox before killing several of the animals just outside of Brevig Mission have now reached a deal with state prosecutors, bringing to a close a case that started back in 2012.

The backers of an ambitious project to build a fiber optic cable between England and Japan beneath Arctic waters—and in the process bring high-speed internet to remote corners of western Alaska—say undertaking has seen delays that will push the arrival of service back until at least 2016.

Nome’s nonprofits and churches will remain exempt from city sales tax—and retailers won’t have their unsold inventories taxed—but at Monday night’s City Council meeting, efforts to charge property tax on airplanes moved forward.

The Norton Sound 450, a regional sled dog race along the western coast of Alaska, will run in 2015, race officials say, committing to a race that was canceled last year and severely shortened the year before.

Though the final count is still pending, unofficial results show Alaskans voting “yes” to legalizing marijuana in last week’s election. But the road to a legal and regulated marijuana market is months away, and communities who still want to keep the divisive drug out are looking at doing so the same way many currently ban alcohol: the local option.

The state department has outlined the nation’s top priorities as the U.S. prepares to chair the international Arctic Council in April, but some Alaska Native groups and state officials argue the national goals are lacking.

Twenty Alaska Native languages are now official languages in the State of Alaska — after Governor Sean Parnell signed House Bill 216 into law this morning at the Alaska Federation of Native conference.

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